Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. An unlawful breach of duty on the part of a ship's master or crew resulting in injury to the ship's owner.

n. Sale or purchase of positions in church or state.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. the act of persistently instigating lawsuits, often groundless ones

n. the sale and/or purchase of political positions of power

n. unlawful or fraudulent acts by the crew of a vessel, harming the vessel's owner.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. The practice of exciting and encouraging lawsuits and quarrels.

n. A fraudulent breach of duty or willful act of known illegality on the part of a master of a ship, in his character of master, or of the mariners, to the injury of the owner of the ship or cargo, and without his consent. It includes every breach of trust committed with dishonest purpose, as by running away with the ship, sinking or deserting her, etc., or by embezzling the cargo.

n. The crime of a judge who is influenced by bribery in pronouncing judgment.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. The purchase or sale of ecclesiastical preferments or of offices of state. See barrator, 1, 3.

n. In old Scots law, the taking of bribes by a judge.

n. The fraud or offense committed by a barrator. See barrator, 4.

n. A vexatious and persistent inciting of others to lawsuits and litigation; a stirring up and maintaining of controversies and litigation. This is a criminal offense at common law.

n. (maritime law) a fraudulent breach of duty by the master of a ship that injures the owner of the ship or its cargo; includes every breach of trust such as stealing or sinking or deserting the ship or embezzling the cargo

n. the crime of a judge whose judgment is influenced by bribery

n. the offense of vexatiously persisting in inciting lawsuits and quarrels

Etymologies

Middle English barratrie, the sale of church offices, from Old French baraterie, deception, malversation, from barater, to cheat; see barrator.

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Early 15th century, in sense “sale of offices”, from Old French baraterie ("deceit, trickery"), from barat ("fraud, deceit, trickery"), of Unknown origin, perhaps Celtic. In marine sense of “unlawful acts causing loss to owner”, 1620s.[1] (Wiktionary)

Examples

In criminal and civil law, barratry is the act or practice of bringing repeated legal actions solely to harass.

In another oration of Demosthenes we discover glimpses of what by many has been deemed maritime insurance, or rather of the fraud at present called barratry, which is practised to defraud the insurer: but, as Park in his learned Treatise on Marine Insurance has satisfactorily proved, the ancients were certainly ignorant of maritime insurance; though there can be no doubt frauds similar to those practised at present were practised.

Eric @77, how about this: a statue of limitations, honoring the heroic sacrifice of the many downtrodden legal professionals who were tragically disbarred for barratry, in the form of a gigantic bronze were-pit-bull defeating a craven Lady Justice.

"Are you quite sure, Mrs. Wellaby, that you haven't committed even the least little tiny tort in the last few days? Because I am ready, now as ever, to defend you against any accusation whatsoever, no matter whether it be barratry or illicit diamond-buying, forgery or coining, breach of promise to marry, or armed resistance to capture."The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 199 of the New York Review of Books hardcover

"The idea was so feasible, in fact, that had the court known of a friendship between Briggs and the Dei Gratia's captain the entire episode might have been ruled an insurance scheme, or barratry—fraud against the owners—at the very least. Morehouse and possibly even Winchester would have gone to jail.... He knew what it looked like. It smacks of insurance fraud even today but, upon examination, that too is unlikely."—Brian Hicks, Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew (NY: Ballantine Books, 2004), 151